Holidays...part 8

Thursday

Our tent neighbours and the Canvas Holidays couriers promised us sunshine today.  We were sceptical, because the weather forecast Matt uses said rain.  We woke up, no rain.  An hour later – rain!  That was it until 8pm, constant rain.  At least it wasn’t torrential like yesterday – but still it was steady rain and it was cold again – about 15 degrees – so not exactly tropical!

Our tent

Cherbourg Express

Our tent neighbours had had enough – they headed home a day early fed up of the rain – not sure they were going to anything better as they live in Guernsey!  We spent the morning playing table tennis whilst doing laundry (we had hoped to wash and dry at the tent, but it wasn’t to be – nothing is going to dry naturally in this weather).  The whole event took about 2 hours, so Tom got in a lot of table tennis practise.  He isn’t too bad either, just needs to be a bit taller so he can reach more shots and so he has a better view of the ball.  He managed a couple of rallies of 10 shots, which I think for a 6 year old total beginner is pretty good.  The clothes came out of the dryer roasting hot – so so nice to handle – the first non damp clothes in 5 days.  We took them back to the tent and then decided what to do for the day.

Caen tram

We were going to explore Honfleur, but with it being really rainy, would it be worth it?  Instead we decided to go to Caen, to do some trainspotting and also there are trams in Caen which we thought a small boy might want a ride on.

We easily found parking near the SNCF Gare, and headed in.  First stop was the café for lunch (pasta for Tom and half a panini each for me and Matt).  Then we went on the platform to do some train spotting.  Well the boys did anyway, I looked at all the black and white photos of soldiers from the second world war which were dotted about – much more interesting (for me anyway!)

We had discovered that a family travel card on the tram was only €6 for a day so we got ourselves one of those and got on the tram into the city centre.  The city centre really wasn’t up to much – a couple of department stores, lots of shoe stores and not much else.  However, there was a C&A which we went in for old times sake and found some great children’s clothes at great prices.  Tom got 3 new T-shirts out of it lucky boy!  We then walked round looking for somewhere for tea and a bun and had almost given up when Matt stumbled across a boulangiere with some tarts and inside seating.  Yahoo.  We went in and the waitress humoured our dodgy French and helped with pronunciation – nice girl.  I had a tart au citron avec meringué, and Matt and Tom shared a rather enormous chocolate brownie.

Rainy bbq

Fortified, we then got the tram.  We didn’t have anywhere to go to as such, just wanted a ride, so rode to the end of the line (only took 15 minutes), then we got off, crossed the tracks and got back on again to go almost to the other end of the line.  Some people may say that our trip was pointless, but it made a small boy happy.  There really isn’t that much to do in Caen – a result of it being almost completely destroyed in the war.  There are old town walls – but no castle and no way to walk round them.  All the rest of the city is boring post war architecture and a huge, huge university.

We got the tram back to the train station, had a quick look to see if there were any trains in or about to arrive (no) and then headed back to the car.

Being stoically British!

We drove home in the drizzle.  Once back at the campsite we decided to have a bbq in the rain – we had some nice looking brochettes to eat and cooking them in the tent would be a real pain.  We had got hold of some bbq firelighting gel, and had squirted some on yesterday when we thought we would be cooking them yesterday – we set a match to it to see if it would work – it did!  In fact we had people coming up to us all excited that someone had managed to get a bbq to light – the result were some rather excellent kebabs which we had with some rice and veggies I cooked on the camp stove.

The rest of the evening was spent playing cards and doing a preliminary pack up.  We head to Brittany tomorrow.  Apparently it is going to be a nice day tomorrow – typical as we will be in the car all day.  Let’s hope we get some sun, or at least some days without rain next week…

Friday

We woke up this morning, opened the door and saw a blue sky?  Then we saw a big golden thing up in the sky.  We weren’t sure what it was, but Tom was pretty sure it was something called a sun.

Typical – we had a long journey to make today in the car!  We packed up, and headed one last time for Caen and then headed West for Benodet.  We had a fantastic journey, first of all it was sunny (always a bonus, everything always looks better in the sun), secondly there were no cars on the road.  We are heading into low season right now – most people will be heading back to the UK for school starting next week.  Tom has the latest starting date I know of (he broke up at the same time as everyone else, so I don’t really understand why he’s going back so late) so there were very little Brits on the road, and the numbers of Dutch, Belgian and German cars declined as well.  The road was fast and empty with very little really to look at.  No interesting loads, and the only buildings of any note on the road were lots of food processing factories (I guess that’s one of the main industries in Brittany). 

We stopped in one of the many picnic places for lunch:  a typical French picnic of baguette, garlic sausage, cheese, salad, pate etc etc.  I do love a French picnic.

Tom managed to keep himself occupied with playing guess the animal with his animal fact cards and playing vets with me – involving his three soft animal friends with various ailments.  We arrived in Benodet a good hour early and smiled nicely at the courier to be allowed in.  It worked.  We are in a cabin in this campsite (for a third of the price of the tent last week!) it is compact, but has everything we need and mainly isn’t damp.  Tom has a room to himself with an ensuite – lucky boy.  We quickly unpacked and then went for a look around the campsite – it has a fantastic water park – complete with regular slides and curly wurly slides.  Tom got quite excited when he saw it.  We are right next to the beach which is fab, means we will be able to have half days on the beach etc, which makes life easier, especially if the unpredictable weather comes back.

We went back to the cabin and got changed into our swimwear and hit the pool.  It is very different to the one at Houlgate, has current channels, and lots of bits and bobs of pools all linking up.  Tom didn’t like the current channel (strange as  he loved it in Centreparcs?) but he loved, no he LOVED the slides and made us go on them again and again and again.

Bénodet sunset

After an hour or so it was beginning to get cold so we headed back to the cabin, had showers and then decided to stretch our legs and head to Benodet for dinner.  The courier told us it was a 10 minute walk, it was a little more than that, more than double that, but it didn’t matter – it was a lovely still and sunny evening, it was a nice walk and we needed to stretch our legs after being in the car all day.

We settled on a busy restaurant which had a fixed price menu for €15 of either moules marinere or smoked salmon galette.  Both of these are Tom’s favourite so he shared our plates (the children’s menu once again was over priced and very dull – so surprised that a nation of gourmands will feed children rubbish when out).  Both meals came with a caramel pancake for pudding (we both had to part with a large portion for his nibs) and a glass of cider each – perfect and not too pricy either.

We walked back under a sun set to the cabin.  Tom said he was tired, so he went straight to bed whilst we caught up with unpacking etc.